The Parts Men Play eBook

‘What about something to drink?’ broke
in Dick Durwent hurriedly, his eyes narrowing.

‘Directly,’ said Smyth, beckoning to the
proprietor, a small man, who, in spite of his years
and an oblong head undecorated by a single hair, appeared
strangely fresh and unworried, as if he had been sleeping
for fifty years in a cellar, and had just come up
to view the attending changes.

‘Archibald,’ said Smyth, ’these
are my friends the Duke of Arkansas and Sir Plumtree
Crabapple.’

The extraordinary little man smiled toothlessly and
fingered his tray.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Smyth, ‘name your
brands.’

‘Give me a double brandy,’ said Durwent,
blowing on his chilled fingers. ‘Better
make it two doubles in a large glass.’

‘Soda, sir?’ queried the proprietor in
a high-pitched, tranquil voice.

‘No,’ said Durwent. ‘You can
bring a little water in a separate glass.’

‘What is your pleasure, your Grace?’ said
Smyth, addressing the American. ’If you
will do Archibald and myself the honour of trying
the Twilight Tinkle, it would be an event of importance
to us both.’

‘Anything at all,’ said Selwyn, sick at
heart as he saw the nervous interlocked fingers of
Dick Durwent pressed together with such intensity
that they were left white and bloodless.

‘This is a little slice of London’s life,’
said Smyth after he had given the order, crossing
his left leg over the right, ’that you visitors
would never find. You hear about the chaps who
succeed and those who come a cropper, but these are
the poor beggars who never had a chance to do either.
There’s genius in this room, gentlemen, but
it’s genius that started swimming up-stream with
a millstone round its neck.’

With a profound shaking of the head, Smyth straightened
his left leg, and after carefully taking in its shape
with partially closed eyes, he replaced it on its
fellow.

‘How do they live?’ queried Selwyn.

‘Scavengers,’ said Smyth laconically.
’Scavengers to success. Do you see that
fellow there with the poached eyes and a four-days’
beard?’

Selwyn looked to the spot indicated by Smyth, and
saw a heavily built man with a pale, dissipated face,
who was fingering an empty glass and leering cynically
with some odd trend of thought. It was a face
that gripped the attention, for written on it was
talent—­immense talent. It was a face
that openly told its tale of massive, misdirected power
of mentality, fuddled but not destroyed by alcohol.

‘That’s Laurence De Foe,’ said Smyth;
’a queer case altogether. Barnardo boy—­doesn’t
know who his parents were, but claims direct descent
from Charlemagne. He’s never really drunk,
but no one ever saw him sober. If he wanted
to, he could write better than any man in London.
Last year, when the critics scored Welland’s
play Salvage for its rotten climax, the author
himself came to De Foe. All night they sat in